Health Care Delivery

The room was packed at the Primary Care Development Corporation’s (PCDC)* Primary Care Innovation Circle.

More than 200 health care executives, providers, community-based agency leaders and practitioners assembled to listen to panelists address the most audacious of tasks: the fate of health care in the United States.

While most people are slowly emerging from the holiday haze, the healthcare investment community kicks off January with the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.

Originally an investors’ meeting for select public and private healthcare companies, the event – and the ecosystem of smaller conferences that surround it – now bring an estimated 30,000 people to San Francisco.

On June 23, Britain, by way of public referendum and by a 52-48% margin, became the first member state to vote to leave the European Union (EU). Nobody had planned for this.

As a tiny amount of Brexit dust begins to settle, it remains to be seen exactly what this unprecedented decision will mean for the National Health Service (NHS) and mental health services in the United Kingdom.

However, it’s more than sunshine that is making Florida a place of interest in Beacon Health Options’ (Beacon) ongoing story. In the first week of July, Beacon launched an outcomes pilot in Florida whose aim is to measure a different level of outcomes – outcomes that matter and truly reflect whether we are improving the lives of some of the most complex and vulnerable members in the state.

It’s not new news that health care, rightly or wrongly deserved, has a reputation for being complicated and challenging to navigate.

It sometimes leaves consumers of health care services with a lingering sense of discontent. For those of us in the industry, whether on the payer or provider side, know that often this reputation is not deserved. However, as the saying goes, perception is more important than reality.

They help people to live longer, deal with stress better, and experience better well-being. The same can be said for health care, where relationships take the form of partnerships. For Beacon Health Options (Beacon), this is especially true in Colorado where, for 22 years, Beacon and its partners have measurably improved the lives of the people they serve.

Why do some people visit the emergency room more than others? Further, what can clinicians, specifically, and the community, generally, do about it?

These are questions a Beacon Health Options (Beacon) pilot program at its Connecticut Behavioral Health Partnership wants to answer. Through my work as an intensive care manager (ICM) in the Hartford area, I can suggest some solutions.